Endless Encores: A Brief Excerpt on People

With the September 22, 2015 publication of my second book, Endless Encores, I wanted to share a few excerpts to catch your interest. Published by The Story Plant, this is a business parable about People, Products, Profits—in that order. This excerpt is from the chapter about People.

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It was getting late in the evening, and as yet there was no additional update on the flight departures. At this point Paul was sort of hoping it would go that way. To leave this conversation unfinished was not something that held much appeal.

“What don’t I know that I wish I knew?” asked Paul, knowing that didn’t exactly come out right. “We put everything into this new game, everything we had to give, but the end result isn’t flourishing.”

“Seems like we’re making quick progress with that wall,” prodded Daphne. “The truth is, you already know everything you need to know. All I can do is perhaps get you to rethink it in a different context. Take me through the project from the beginning.”

“The good one or the follow-up?” asked Paul.

“Why would I want to retrace the path of mediocrity?” replied Daphne. “The good one, the big winner—where did you begin with the original Ethereal Gaze?”

“We started with a pitch. We’d been kicking around this concept for a few years, the idea of an enormous war game, galactic in scope, but without a lot of weapons—without any bullets, or tactical bombs, or spleens exploding, any of the normal shooter stuff that was leaping off the shelf. We said we’d try to do it with clever ideas of strategy, mind-blowing graphics, a full symphonic soundtrack, and characters that made you believe they were real.”

“Sounds visionary, heck of an agenda for a library of program code,” lauded Daphne. “You even went against the grain and tried to build something that wasn’t a proven big seller. But tell me, and I sort of asked you this before but it is worth repeating, who is we?”

“We, the team,” answered Paul. “The core design group, the people I see every day who completely know this stuff, who come up with the ideas that make it happen.”

“Cool, got it, then let me ask you, which came first, the concept, or the talent to create it?”

“Why do I think this is another trick question?” asked Paul.

“The last time you thought I asked you a trick question it wasn’t, so go with your instinct. Which comes first, the idea, or those who offer the idea? This is a key starting point, kind of like the chicken and egg thing, only we’re going to solve it.”

“You can’t have an idea without someone expressing it,” said Paul, hoping he hadn’t said something too obvious.

“There you have it, bulls-eye,” declared Daphne. “Not just someone expressing it, someone with the ability and training to express it, and then be able to deliver on it. A team or an individual, it doesn’t matter, the foundation is the same. Let’s talk a little about talent.”

“I’ll try to keep up with you,” remarked Paul. “You have a lot of big ideas.”

“Too many people I’ve encountered over the years in business think it’s solely the big idea that matters,” continued Daphne. “Don’t get me wrong, big ideas are critical to success. You need spectacular concepts when you envision new products and services you want to bring to market. We’ll talk about that shortly. But before you can even think about creating, marketing, distributing, and selling anything of value, you have to have the right people in place to get the job done. Desperate leaders spend too much time worrying first about output. Long-term leaders spend the majority of their time thinking about talent.”

“I don’t know about that,” replied Paul. “I live in a world where customers need to be hugely excited, almost frothing at the mouth, standing in line overnight outside the store, waiting for the product to release before it’s even on the shelf.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, in one way or another, we all do,” countered Daphne. “Great ideas can be thrilling, but they don’t make payroll. Ideas get the ball rolling, but they are overrated. We worry too much about those who would steal them. Getting a product to market that embodies a great idea is what matters, and that is extraordinarily difficult. Products don’t build themselves.”